Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, Dean, Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University
In an interview with Invest:, Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, dean of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, emphasized AI’s sweeping influence. “Across the board — from operations to instruction to outreach — AI has become deeply embedded in everything we do,” Bajeux-Besnainou said. From curriculum design to operations, the Tepper School is reimagining business education through interdisciplinary collaboration and real-world integration, she added.
What changes in the national or regional business landscape have most influenced your programming and priorities over the past year?
AI is unquestionably the biggest driver of change. At Carnegie Mellon University, and particularly at the Tepper School, AI is everywhere. Regardless of discipline, nearly every faculty member is involved with AI in some way. It’s part of engineering, computer science, the arts, and, of course, business. At the Tepper School, we think about AI in multiple dimensions. One is operations — how we run the business school itself. We’ve been intentional about using AI tools to improve efficiency so our people can focus on more meaningful tasks.
For example, our admissions team is about to launch a generative AI tool on our website that allows prospective applicants to ask questions and receive real-time answers. These are often repeated questions — about curriculum, financial aid, or program structure — and using AI to handle them frees up our staff to have deeper, more personalized conversations with candidates.
In the classroom, we’re seeing AI integrated both as subject matter and as a teaching tool. Our research faculty are using AI in their methodologies, and we’re actively teaching AI as it applies to business. At the same time, we’re leveraging AI to innovate how we teach. One of our most exciting initiatives is focused on building interactive cases tailored to specific learning objectives. These cases are being developed directly with faculty to bring more dynamic learning into the classroom.
On top of that, we’re expanding access to AI education beyond traditional students. We already work with companies through custom executive programs, but soon we’ll launch an AI for Business online course in partnership with CMU’s School of Computer Science. It’s a comprehensive offering with 24 faculty members contributing to teach AI from a business perspective. Across the board — from operations to instruction to outreach — AI has become deeply embedded in everything we do.
How is Tepper School supporting interdisciplinary learning, particularly for professionals seeking flexible or nontraditional formats?
Interdisciplinary learning is part of the DNA of both the Tepper School and Carnegie Mellon as a whole. Many of our faculty hold joint appointments or are affiliated with schools like Computer Science or Engineering, and that collaboration shows up in both teaching and research.
Physically, our building reflects this ethos. Though it opened in 2018, it still feels quite new, and what makes it unique is its design. Two-thirds of the space is occupied by the Tepper School, while the remaining third is used by other parts of the university, including the School of Computer Science, the Dietrich College of Humanities, and the campus-wide entrepreneurship center. Even the university’s admissions center is located here, and there’s a large food court at the core of the building, all intentionally placed to create a central hub for interdisciplinary activity.
We’ve also broken-down internal silos. Unlike most business schools, we don’t have physical divisions by department. There’s no finance wing or separate marketing corridor. Faculty from different disciplines sit side by side. An economist might be next to a marketing professor or someone in organizational behavior.
How does Tepper’s location in Pittsburgh influence the school’s direction, and how are you engaging with the local business community to shape your priorities?
Being in Pittsburgh plays a major role in how we shape our strategy and partnerships. One of our core values is collaboration, and that extends beyond academia into the corporate world. We are deeply engaged with local businesses and have strong ties with companies headquartered in the region. A great example of this is our partnership with PNC Bank. We host the PNC Center at the Tepper School, which serves as a hub for collaborative efforts. Through that relationship, we work on joint research, executive education, and student projects. Our students take on capstone experiences that directly connect them with real-world business challenges at PNC, which is incredibly valuable for their learning.
This type of engagement helps us ensure our curriculum remains relevant to what businesses need. We want our students to graduate not only with strong academic foundations, but with a clear understanding of how those skills translate to industry. Partnerships like the one with PNC are key to keeping that alignment strong. And it’s not just about large corporations. We also work closely with the broader ecosystem — startups, nonprofits, and community-focused organizations — to keep our ties to Pittsburgh deep and meaningful.
From your perspective, what are the region’s greatest strengths and opportunities?
I would highlight two sectors that stand out: healthcare and higher education. Pittsburgh has a very strong healthcare presence, anchored by institutions like UPMC and Allegheny Health. These two systems create a dynamic environment through competition, which drives growth and innovation. When you walk around Pittsburgh, you see hospitals being renovated or built almost everywhere. It’s clear that healthcare is a vibrant and expanding industry here.
At the same time, Pittsburgh is very much a university town. Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh are the two largest institutions, but the region is home to several others that contribute to a rich academic landscape. The presence of so many universities fuels innovation, particularly in areas like technology, entrepreneurship, and the life sciences. That innovation, in turn, spills over into the local economy.
Our own entrepreneurship center, the Swartz Center, is housed within the Tepper School’s building, and it serves as a university-wide resource. This proximity fosters the kind of interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration that makes Pittsburgh such a compelling place for business. It’s a city where ideas move quickly from academic research into practical applications, and that’s a major advantage for investors and entrepreneurs alike.
How does Tepper build partnerships with Pittsburgh’s business community, and how do those collaborations shape your institutional priorities?
Our approach is rooted in collaboration, both across university disciplines and with local industry. The PNC Center at the Tepper School exemplifies this model: through it we engage PNC Bank in research collaborations, provide real-world learning through student capstone projects, and design custom executive education programs for their leadership. These initiatives ground our academic programs in practical business challenges while offering fresh perspectives and human-driven, data-informed insights that inform teaching and research. It’s a reciprocal partnership where academic rigor meets business relevance and both benefit profoundly.
With the rise of AI, how is Tepper adjusting its educational strategy to ensure students remain ethical, critical thinkers in a technology-rich world?
That’s central to how we think about the future of education. It is not just about staying current with technology, it’s about holding on to the very qualities that make us human. Our guiding principle is “The intelligent future, data informed, human driven.” We build our curriculum around the belief that while AI may grow ever stronger, we must ensure human judgment grows stronger still. For example, ethics is woven deeply into our MBA program. We believe AI should serve humans, not replace human initiative or decision-making. Maintaining human agency amid advancing technology remains non-negotiable at the Tepper School.
I frequently ask myself how we will teach students five or 10 years from now. As AI becomes more intelligent, our challenge is ensuring that human teachers, human thinkers, also evolve. We want to prepare learners to critically assess, cross-check, and apply AI — not just use it mindlessly. That means emphasizing values like ethics, critical thinking, and judgment. Education should inspire human agency, not erode it. That vision guides our thinking at the Tepper School and across Carnegie Mellon.
